Change can be hard. Especially at mid-life when our inadequacies can scream “Stop!” Carolyn Castleberry Hux and Shayne Moore challenge us forward.
Elisa
Now What? Embracing Transformational Change in Your Second Half
By Carolyn Castleberry Hux and Shayne Moore
Embracing change began for me (Carolyn) with a tearful, desperate praying session on my bedroom floor on a day when I believed my life was over. I could feel my spirit dying. I begged God to show up. The life I had so carefully planned and cultivated was ending, along with my marriage of more than two decades. Although I had seen the end coming for years, it happened just as my children were getting ready to leave the nest. In fact, my goal had been to hold everything together until the kids were safely away at college so they wouldn’t have to deal with the daily realities of a broken family. My hope was that if they didn’t have to live through the ending, they wouldn’t feel the loss as deeply. I was wrong.
The Choice to Change
My spirit did not die that day and I tenaciously kept begging, “Finish what you started in me, God. Your love is eternal—don’t quit on me now.” I tried to look toward the future, but I was haunted by doubts. Is my life over? What purpose do I still have? Are my best years behind me? The actions I took next and the difficult choices I made to move forward ultimately led me to a one-on-one coaching program at the Halftime Institute.
One of the first things my coach told me was that God’s plans for me were bigger and better than anything I could dream up on my own. And he was right. As a little girl, I never dreamed I would grow up to be a transformational change and strengths coach. I didn’t tell my parents, “Someday, I am going to become an emotional intelligence practitioner.” Only God could have thought up that one. And only God could have brought me the man of my dreams in my second half of life, a partner who shares my faith, sense of humor, and love of adventure.
It took hard work to get clear on who I am, to get free from what was holding me back, to embrace my calling as a coach, and to get going by pursuing the work I love. Although the changes I experienced happened over a decade, my entire life was transformed through this process. Even better, the more I helped other women, the clearer my path became with God-given compassion for their pain and confusion during this season.
Now The Choice is Yours
During my transformation, my coach also told me that the choice to change was mine alone to make. So I want to challenge you with the same challenge he gave to me: “The first step to changing your life is realizing that you are responsible for your life. You’re responsible for where you are now and for where you will go next.”
It’s a choice that faces every woman at halftime: Am I willing to take responsibility for my life? Am I willing to take one step and then another? Am I willing to change? And the God-given path to reimagine your life will be as unique as the woman who makes that choice.
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Carolyn Castleberry Hux and Shayne Moore are the authors of the newly released Women at Halftime: A Guide to Reigniting Dreams and Finding Renewed Joy and Purpose in Your Next Season. Their focus is to support women and challenge them to think bigger than their perceived limitations. They believe we all have a God-given purpose on this earth, we are God’s workmanship created for good works that have already been planned for us.
Carolyn Castleberry Hux is a former journalist and cohost of Living the Life, which aired on ABC Family Channel. She found her second-half calling coaching women in leadership with the Halftime Institute and coaching teams in national security for transformational change.
Shayne Moore is the author or coauthor of five books. Shayne served as director of operations at the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College Graduate School, and she taught the course on anti–human trafficking for Wheaton's MA program in humanitarian and disaster leadership.